Build Your Dream Sex Machine

Last week I wrote about Violet Blue's demo of the Thrillhammer, a sex machine located in New York that she controlled from a laptop in San Francisco. What I didn't mention was the price of a Thrillhammer.

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The Platinum model will set you back about $4,900; the Gold, $4,200. For custom machines, prices vary depending on what you order.

If you had thousands of dollars for a splurge, would you really spend it on an internet-controlled sex chair when you could buy a good motorcycle instead? Or maybe a home theater system?

Those items may not be as high on your wish list as they are on mine. Still — and I could be wrong — I suspect few of us would blow $4,900 or more on a multimedia-equipped recliner with a dildo attached. If nothing else, where would you put it? (The Thrillhammer, I mean. I know where to put the dildo.)

But that doesn't mean we have to let the potential of teledildonics pass us by.

The mastermind behind Slashdong, who calls himself qDot, wants everyone to be able to participate in remote sex if and when the opportunity presents itself. And he doesn't want you to have to spend thousands — or even the hundred-plus it costs to get started with Sinulate Entertainment or High Joy Products — to do it.

"The first idea was kind of a joke," qDot says. "I came up with it about five or six years ago, hooking up a sex toy to the Quake video game on the PC just out of silliness, thinking, 'Hey you can shoot people and (the vibrator) will go faster.' But then I started realizing that it's actually a cool idea."

QDot is a robotics engineer who works in a mainstream lab, which is one reason he keeps his online identity completely separate from his offline life. His fiance supports his extracurricular activities; his boss might not be as understanding.

His fascination with teledildonics — sex toys that lovers can control for one another over the internet, whether they're in the same room, the same house, or 3,000 miles apart — grew out of his interest in video games.

"It's about taking the environment of an old game, one you can't recode or add to, and making it more immersive using force-feedback signals," he says.

He points out that force feedback has been around since the 1980s for PC games, and since the mid-1990s for the PlayStation.

I can practically hear him shrugging over the phone. "All we're doing is taking the electricity that's supposed to go to the motors and routing it somewhere else," he says.

Easy enough for a robotics engineer like qDot or Blue, but what about the rest of us?

"The same basic concepts that any robotics or electronics buff work with apply to sex toys as well," qDot says. "The circuits used to control vibrators through the internet are the same ones used to make little robots and other home-hobbyist-type stuff. So the entry level is actually fairly low."

And that's the other reason qDot launched Slashdong, with its tutorials showing you how to create your own sexercycle (a stationary bike equipped with a dildo) and your own SeXbox (an Xbox for adults only). He wants more people to get into robotics, and to realize it's just not that difficult.

Slashdong is just one of five websites he maintains to teach people how to build robots and other electronic gadgets themselves. Deathbots is another.

"(Deathbots) is my 'clean' site," he explains. "But it doesn't get a lot of readership so I decided to use sex toys and teledildonics to educate people about engineering."

Cost is only one factor that might encourage someone to build their own teledildonics system. Privacy is another, especially in those parts of the world where you can't pick up a vibrator at the drugstore. (Sorry, Alabama.)

"A lot of people really freak out about sex stuff, giving out their name and credit card online," he says.

"If you do it by yourself with your own software or open source or whatever you want to call it, it becomes untraceable, because you aren't spending any money or signing up to a large service. And you can customize it to do whatever you want it to do."

You won't find any nudity at Slashdong, and in the future you might not even see flesh. QDot has learned that his "robosapien" and other bots can hold parts and sex toys for the photographs that illustrate each project tutorial.

For qDot, the site is about engineering and education, not about adult products or entertainment. "I'm more interested in the sexiness of engineering than I am the engineering of sex," he says.

However, he's quick to point out the advantages for singles — you can potentially have sex with anyone on the internet — and for non-singles. "It's part of trying to maintain monogamy through technology," he says.

"A person can take their sex toy, run to Radio Shack, buy some parts," he says. "Not only are they getting off, they've learned about electronics, motor control, robotics and whatever else. It's cool because you can use a lot of things for sex, but everything you learn up to that point can be re-implemented for other projects."

Before I talked to qDot I never would have thought to build my own teledildonics system. Now, if I ever have a spare moment, I might tackle one of the simpler projects.

In the meantime, I'll keep saving up for a new motorcycle — sans dildo.

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